Guide The Light Interview With Phasic Labs' Paul Ripley

Modojo

Nov. 28, 2012, 6:56 AM

If you've been following our coverage recently, you'll know that we're rather taken with Guide The Light, the latest release from publisher AppyNation. It's an intriguing puzzle game that challenges players to guide beams of light around a generous selection of levels to solve puzzles and tease open doors.

We decided to check in with Paul Ripley, Founder of Phasic Labs and one-man developer of Guide The Light, to talk about creating the game.

Can you tell us a bit about your development background and how you came to work with AppyNation?

I started tinkering with programming way back in the days of the Commodore 64, but never made any fully fledged games. I first got into developing games much later on, when I started work for Magenta Software in Liverpool, working on PlayStation 1, and later PlayStation 2 titles. I worked on 3 titles there, and then took a year out to write music, do gigs, and write audio and VJ software. That was great fun, but not a great way to pay the bills, so I went back to the world of employment, eventually ending up at Sony Studio Liverpool working as a programmer on the PlayStation 3 launch title 'Formula 1 2006 Championship Edition'. I stayed at Sony for about 5 years, working on Wipeout HD (PS3), Motorstorm 2 : Pacific Rift (PS3), and on a load of prototype projects. Unfortunately, I was made redundant in 2010, and that's when I decided to go solo. I nearly took a job at Bizarre Creations, but decided to try my own thing for a bit, which is fortunate as Bizarre Creations closed its doors forever later that year.

I learnt iPhone development, and released Hexius within a few months, and then ended up back at Sony part-time, doing contract programming on the Vita launch title Wipeout 2048. At the same time as I was contracting, I was developing Guide The Light, along with about 4 other iPhone prototypes which will hopefully turn into full games in the future. Studio Liverpool sadly closed earlier this year, so I'm working full time on Phasic Labs projects now.

Regarding the publishing of Guide The Light, I had previously been working with another publisher for a number of months, but that didn't work out. I was just wondering whether to self-publish Guide The Light when Jon from Onteca, another local indie developer, mentioned he was involved with a new publisher that was focusing on publishing indie mobile titles. That publisher was AppyNation, and after I dropped them an email, we had a phone chat and everything was agreed nice and quickly.

I decided it was better to let someone else handle the promotion, as I just don't have the resources required for that as a one-man studio. I'd much rather focus on development, and promoting a mobile title nowadays is a full-time job.

What was the inspiration behind Guide The Light, and can you talk us through the development process of the game?

I couldn't really say what the inspiration for Guide The Light was. I had the idea many years ago, but never had the time to make it. I just really like puzzle games, and thought the idea of having to move light through a maze could really lend itself to making lots of creative levels.

I got the basics of the game up and running (complete with terrible programmer graphics) in a matter of weeks, and then spent a long, long time trying out level ideas, refining the various components of the puzzles, and generally tuning the prototype. Originally the levels were much bigger, multi-screen levels, but I decided it was much nicer (and less brain-melting) if you could see the entire level at once. This reduced the scope of the puzzles that could be developed, but it turned out that there was still plenty of space to develop a great variety of levels.

The whole process took longer than it should have done, as I was contracting for half the week, and also developing other prototypes at the same time. After a few iterations though, it became apparent to me that Guide The Light had definite potential, especially after handing early prototypes over to friends, and then coming back half an hour later to find them still playing.

People also kept asking me if I had any new levels for them to try, which made me think I was on to something. Since it's release I've had friends blaming me for their lack of sleep, because they keep waking up and deciding to tackle a level!How has the game performed on the App Store since release? Is it meeting your expectations?

It's not doing great to be honest, despite the top reviews on the App Store, and some excellent reviews on some great gaming websites. It's early days though, so there is still hope. It seems much harder now to get the initial exposure on the App Store than it was 2 years ago, when new releases were both less frequent, and more prominent on the front page.Were there any puzzle elements you prototyped that didn't make it into the final release?

There was one element which I removed. It was uni-directional conveyor belts, so that if you dragged a mirror onto one, it would slide to the far end, and you wouldn't be able to slide it back. This just made levels really annoying though. You often ended up not being able to finish the level, or had to slide mirrors back to the start via another route. This also made the puzzles much harder to design for some reason. It was already hard enough to design the levels, as I'd set myself the goal of designing levels that only had one solution, which I did in most cases.

Some levels have a few solutions, but as far as I am aware, you can't complete any of the levels without using all of the mirrors and blocks. If you find any that can be solved with mirrors to spare, please let me know!

It's a tough game! Was this a deliberate design decision, or do you feel this is just part-and-parcel of the puzzle mechanics?

I wouldn't say it was deliberate, although I didn't want to make a game that you could just walk through in 30 minutes without having to think. It wouldn't be a puzzle game if you didn't have to solve any problems. I think that some difficulty is required for the player to get a sense of achievement when they complete a level, otherwise it's just grinding through a game for no reason...